


Yakusoku

by nachonaco



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 03:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3473114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachonaco/pseuds/nachonaco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve-year-old Abigail Callaghan had a promising career in botfighting ahead of her, but there was a more pressing promise that she was meant to keep, and she had failed.</p><p>Cross-posted to FF.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yakusoku

Abi Callaghan smiled to herself as she sat on her windowsill, her little plush robot safely swaddled in her San Fransokyo Ninjas hoodie’s pocket. She grinned to herself and mentally patted herself on the back. Only twelve-years-old, and she’d already outsmarted her dad. He had no idea she was out here. She took a moment to savor her intelligence, and laughed. Since her mother had died in a mugging, her father had practically kept her under lock and key. But tonight, that changed. She gripped the lattice siding, feeling it wobble and buckle. She bit her lip nervously, her stomach churning, its waves matching the lattice’s as she braced herself. “Okay, Abi, you got this, you got this, you’re okay,” she affirmed silently. “Daijoubu desu.”  
Her stomach nearly folded in on itself when the lattice cracked and she fell with a fwump onto the meticulously-manicured lawn. She moaned to herself as she rubbed her sore back, thanking God above she hadn’t caught the attention of her father. She took off, her sneakers accidentally landing on her dog Taro’s tail. Taro bayed, the beagle alerting his brother and sister, Sakura and Sparrow. She cast a glance at the back door, expecting to see her father’s silhouette against the white curtain. She gulped when her fear came true.  
“Abigail Amelia Callaghan!” He called out, and she winced, one hand in her pocket to secure her bot and the other held high in a wave. She flashed him a large, nervous grin.  
“Hi, Daddy.”  
“And just where do you think you were going?”  
She nervously looked behind her. “Uh…”  
“You were going botfighting, weren’t you?” He groaned. “Abi, we’ve been through this, it’s dangerous! You could get hurt, or-or arrested…just…come on inside.” She watched her father as he refused to make eye contact with her, his eyes going to the broken lattice by her bedroom window. She watched as his chest heaved with a large sigh. “We’ll watch the recap of the Ninjas championship, okay? Just…please, Abi, come inside.”  
She stood still.  
“Abi, come on.”  
No movement.  
“Abigail Amelia.”  
She still gave him no verbal response, she only pouted and shoved her other hand stubbornly in her pocket, brow furrowed as she stared at him.  
She heard him groan softly as he stepped toward her, and instinctively she froze. He wasn’t abusive in any way, shape, or form, but still, he was rather intimidating when he was upset. She rolled her eyes as he walked behind her and gently tugged at her hood. “Inside. Now.”  
She let herself be guided by her father, but she wouldn’t remain daunted for long.  
“Taro, Sakura, Sparrow, you too,” he added, and the beagles followed them inside.  
-  
She sat with him in their large living room, the two of them occupying large recliners and a large bowl of popcorn in her lap. She watched, falsely enraptured, as Koiso rounded the bases. She looked at her father. “Daddy, I-“  
He was as silent as she’d been out in the yard.  
She huffed.  
“Daddy,” she tried again.  
She watched as he sighed, paused the television, and sat up. “Abi,” he said softly. “I…I just don’t want you going botfighting, okay? It’s dangerous.”  
She looked down at the hardwood floor.  
“Yeah.”  
“I mean it.”  
She could take no more. “Okay! I get it!” She snapped, her temper finally getting the best of her. She stormed upstairs, slamming her door. She paced on the floor before her bed, her feet occasionally dragging on the fluffy San Fransokyo Ninjas rug by the foot of her bed. She sighed. What to do, what to do….it was a problem. She looked down at her teddy bear bot. “Kuma-chan,” she said softly, clutching her little robot friend tightly in her hand. “We’re goin’ fighting.” She carefully took the top sheet off of her bed, opening her window just a crack. She tied off one of the corners of her bedsheet to her bedpost. She sat on the sill, judging the distance. She shook her head. She had miscalculated, and she only hoped she could rectify the situation before her father discovered her. She gulped.  
“Think, Callaghan,” she whispered to herself as she jumped back down into the room. “What would Dad say to his students…” She covered her mouth with her palm in thought, her elbow cupped in her other hand, her finger tapping rhythmically on it. “Aha!” She exclaimed triumphantly. “Use that big brain of yours and think your way out!” She snuck over to the linen closet, looking through the pile of clean sheets. She grabbed a couple of full-sized topsheets, tying them together. “Perfect,” she said softly, and stowed Kuma-chan, that faithful little bear-bot, into her Ninjas hoodie once more.  
She smirked. This was going to work, she thought, as she climbed down the sheet rope, her eyes cast towards the broken latticework, splintered and destroyed under her measly hundred-pound weight. A pang of guilt ran through her, and she closed her eyes and jumped down. There were no dogs to get her in trouble this time, and so she was free to come and go as she pleased.  
There was no way her old man was going to catch her this time.  
-  
She’d never been in the city at night. The sound of the subways above and the cable cars at surface level were almost disorienting, the neon lights displaying in English and in Japanese hiragana and katakana were far too bright. She’d been used to the soft amber light of the fireplace in her father’s study, reading books on robotics. This was something exciting. “So this is what nightlife is like,” she whispered, her mouth agape in a smile.  
But where was she going to find the bot fight? She looked to her cell phone, and decided she was better off if she powered it off. If she didn’t, there was every chance in the world her father could track her. She would turn it back on, she decided, when she was ready to fight. Her phone was Kuma-chan’s controller, after all.  
Alone and unaided, she gulped as she walked the main streets, staying away from the alleys. She passed the alley where her mother’s body had been found, and stuck her hands into her pockets, holding on so tightly to Kuma-chan that she could feel the bot’s wires and metal skeleton. She relented, realizing that a damaged bot was not going to win any fights. She gasped, taking the bot out of her pocket to inspect it. She found no faults or defects, and put the robot back in her pocket.  
“YAMA! YAMA! YAMA!”  
“Kuma-chan,” she said to the bot. “I think we found our botfight.” She had heard of Yama before, he was a dropout from SFIT, had majored in robotics, had hated her father. She gulped. Could she really take this guy on? She stepped into the alley.  
“Hey, Yama!” She barked. “I’ll take you on.” She stood Kuma-chan up in the red fighting circle, taking her phone out and turning it on. Before she could even open the remote app, her phone buzzed with no less than ten text messages from her father.  
She gulped and looked at her opponent. “H-hey, uh, wait a sec, will you?” She texted something quick, something she’d practically committed to memory – ‘At the bookstore’. She didn’t even care that the bookstore was probably closed, her father hadn’t left the house except for work since her mother’s death. Even she could see the change in her father, his bright eyes dulling and almost icing over, as his world had been consumed by the fact that his wife was no longer present. She closed her eyes. “All right, Yama, you ready for a show?”  
She wasn’t afraid, even if the man she was about to battle was ten times her size – or so it seemed. She’d never say it out loud, but it was fairly obvious Yama had enjoyed the cafeteria at SFIT a little too much. “Come on,” she said. “Scared of getting whooped by a kid?” A devilish smirk played across her face as Kuma-chan assumed a threatening stance. “You should be.”  
She pressed a button on her phone’s touch screen, and Kuma-chan made a gesture as if to beckon its opponent forward.  
Yama laughed. “All right, kid, if that’s the way you want it, I’ll give ya one free pass. If you can beat me, you get to stay, you lose, you go home and play with your dolls.”  
“It’s you who’s gonna end up playin’ with dolls, dude.” She rolled her eyes and smirked.  
“All right, Little Yama, let’s show this girl what we’ve got.”  
The large bot thundered toward Kuma-chan, the small bear hopelessly dwarfed by metallic bulk. Pressing out a combo, Abigail watched as her bear danced in the chalk ring, doing a quick cartwheel and landing a few blows on Little Yama’s head. Soon after, the bear-bot did a succession of somersaults aimed towards the bigger bot’s legs in an attempt to trip it. She watched as the bots grappled, and made Kuma-chan release its grip and slide back. Little Yama fell to the concrete with a sudden lurch and thud, its faceplates coming off. A few more swipes of her phone was all it took to ascend to victory.  
“This…this…how?!” Yama growled, his brow furrowed in frustration.  
“I’ll tell you how,” Abigail said, putting her bot in her hoodie’s pouch and clutching it tightly with both hands, staring at her disgraced opponent. “I’m Abigail Callaghan.”  
“Callaghan?”  
“Did she say Callaghan?”  
“No way, she couldn’t-“  
“There’s no way she’s Professor Callaghan’s kid.”  
“Callaghan?” Yama said as he stood up. “Did you say Callaghan?”  
“I sure did!” She said, her brow furrowed. “Got a problem with that, Mama’s Boy? That’s what you are! Yama the Mama’s Boy!” She laughed. “Can’t even win a botfight against a little girl!” She gave a derisive laugh. “Aw, jeez, no way you couldn’t cut it at SFIT!”  
“Take care of her,” Yama growled, stepping away.  
“H-Hey, uh, guys?” Abigail said nervously, backing up against the building. “I’m sorry about what I-“ She gulped. Was this really the best way to win them over? “Let’s talk this ov-“  
CRACK!  
Her sentence was cut short by the feel of a fist on her face, her head whipping to the side upon impact and she had actually been forced to the ground in a semi-fetal position. Blood gushed out of her nose like a broken pipe, and she wiped at it a bit. “H-Hey! You broke my nose!” She remained indignant through her mistreatment. This was it. She would fight them herself this time, and she would win. How hard could it be? She shakily got to her feet, but did not get her chance to fight.  
Before she could lay so much as a finger on her assailants, everyone in the alley had their attention turned to a car that had screeched to a halt at the alley entrance, its driver angrily slamming the driver’s side door. “Abigail Amelia Callaghan!”  
She cringed, then squealed as waves of pain cascaded over her face, while her father approached. “Car. Now,” he demanded, and Abigail had no choice but to obey now. She’d already stepped in it big time, and pressing the issue further would only anger her father more. She silently got into the car, and wished to disappear. She did the best she could, sliding down to the floorboard, but kept her head up so she could see her father.  
In a matter of moments, her father had returned, slamming his door once more and sighing. His gaze did not meet hers, and he backed out of the alley and onto the main road. He huffed, and she watched as his shoulders shook. A tear rolled down his cheek, and it was only by the headlights of a passing semi that Abigail could see her father’s nose was in worse shape than hers. “You,” he said softly, accusingly, his voice burdened by sobs. “You deliberately disobeyed me.”  
“Daddy, I-“  
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said softly. “Just stop, Abi. You’re making it worse.”  
Her stomach sank.  
-  
The moment they entered the house, he gently dragged her into the bathroom, still silent. He sat her down on the toilet lid. “Here,” he said softly. “This might…sting a little.” She flinched as a cold washcloth was pressed to her face, and every gentle bristle of it may as well have been a hammer.  
She screamed in pain and her father moved the washcloth away to further inspect. She met his eyes with tear-filled ones. “Shit,” she heard her father say. “It’s broken. Shit, Abi…shit.” She heard him heave a sigh as he sat on the rim of the bathtub. “What have you done? What were you thinking?”  
“I-“  
He glared at her.  
“-am going to be extremely quiet,” she whispered.  
“You’d better.” The statement made her flinch. “We gotta go to the hospital.”  
-  
Abigail hated hospitals. San Fransokyo Medical Center was no exception. Abi kept to herself, Kuma-chan still in her pocket, as her father guided her to the emergency department. She gulped. “Dad, I don’t want to-“ she said softly. He gripped her shoulder tighter. She kept her mouth shut.  
“Yeah, uh,” she heard her father say. “My daughter was involved in a bit…a bit of a scuffle.”  
Abigail looked down, her cheeks red with embarrassment, as she saw the receptionist’s not-well-hidden expression of shock. She clutched Kuma-chan tighter, no longer a conqueror of the botfighting ring, but just a scared little girl. She screwed her eyes shut tightly, trying to keep from crying from the sheer embarrassment – and the pain – of it all. She felt her father rub her shoulder slightly to calm her. She knew deep down he was still upset with her and that feeling wasn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon.  
“The nurse will be with you shortly,” the receptionist said softly, then looked at Abigail as their eyes met, Abigail with a slight smile to attempt to reassure the stranger.  
A few moments later, they were called into the emergency room proper, and a woman Abigail regarded as very pretty glanced at her before closing the curtain partition. “No, please,” Abi begged. “I want my dad to-“  
“We need to ask your dad a couple of questions,” the pretty woman said.  
She gasped. She was smart enough to know what this meant – it was suspicious for sure. She was in the emergency room at twelve-fifteen in the morning with a bloody nose. She slowed her breathing, realizing at that moment she had been breathing too hard too fast.  
“-ever hit her?”  
“No,” was her father’s cool and honest response. “Never.”  
“Lost your temper? Anything like that?” Abigail gasped. The mere thought of her father being accused of child abuse was nauseating. He was the kindest man she knew.  
“No,” was the answer once more. “Abigail’s all I’ve got left.”  
“How did this happen?”  
“She was attacked by a group of botfighters.”  
“Was she botfighting herself, sir?”  
“I raised her better than that.” After all this, the escape attempts and the success, he still had her back.  
“And your wounds, sir?”  
“I was saving her.”  
She watched as the woman’s silhouette nodded. “Thank you, Doctor Callaghan, sir.” The woman left the emergency room bay, and her father was free to move the curtain and join.  
“Daddy, I didn’t-“  
He nodded. “I know, I know you didn’t mean for anything like this to happen.”  
She folded her hands neatly in her lap.  
“I’m putting bars on your window if I have to. And you’re paying me back for the lattice. No allowance until it’s fully paid off.” She watched as her father held his head in his hands. “Ohh….where did I go wrong?”  
A tear rolled down her cheek.  
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Abi said softly. “I’m the screwup. I’ll be better, I promise.”  
-  
Their hospital admission only lasted two hours and forty-five minutes, and more than anything, Abigail just wanted to go to bed. But she’d been called to her father’s study first, just after she’d prepared for bed. She stood before the lit fireplace.  
“Bring me your bot.”  
“What are you going to do?”  
“I said bring me your bot.” His voice was tired, he was tired, she could tell, and it was best to just comply. She slowly inched forward, Kuma-chan still in her pocket. She had a rather bad habit of sleeping in her sweatshirts, something of which the inhospitable weather of San Fransokyo nights were not so forgiving. She gulped and stepped closer toward her father, Kuma-chan presented to him like a sacrificial offering. The fireplace crackled behind them, the amber glow it produced dancing across her father’s now-slightly-scarred face. Another amber source, this one liquid, swirled in a glass in her father’s hand. She nodded slowly. Her father placed the glass of whiskey on the oak table by his armchair.  
“Where’s the entry point?”  
“Hm?” She was a little tired at this point and dazed and fearful, a mélange of emotions she hated feeling all at once.  
“The batteries, Abi. Where do the batteries go.”  
“Left leg,” she said softly. “The…batteries are in the left leg.” She had put them there after noting Edward Elric’s left automail leg, and couldn’t resist paying homage to her favorite anime character. She watched as he sauntered over to his desk, and she heard him shuffle around in the drawers for something.  
He had pulled out a Phillips-head screwdriver.  
A moment later, the batteries were out of her beloved bot.  
“Daddy?” she asked uneasily. “Wh-what are you doing?”  
“I,” he said softly as he put the battery pack in her hands. “Am making sure you never go botfighting again.”  
“Dad, I promise, I won’t go botfighting again, just don’t-“  
He threw the battery-less bear into the fireplace.  
“I hate you,” she said softly as she watched the bear burn, then turned on her heels and ran to her room, sniffling the entire way. She didn’t know if it was true or not, but she certainly felt it. She curled into the fetal position on her Ninjas bedspread, sobbing and clutching the battery pack like it was her own heart, not her bot’s.  
She felt nothing but hate and contempt for him in that moment.


End file.
